


Songs About Jane

by strayphoenix



Category: Cowboy Bebop (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Complicated Relationships, F/M, Past Torture, Red Dragon Syndicate, Resolved Sexual Tension, Sexual Content, Sexual Tension, Spike and Julia survive RFB, Team Dynamics, Team as Family, canon divergence - real folk blues, happy ending but its complicated, julia is a badass, julia joins the bebop crew
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-27
Updated: 2019-02-27
Packaged: 2019-11-06 03:51:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17932328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strayphoenix/pseuds/strayphoenix
Summary: Faye wants to hate Julia. She REALLY does. She wants to hate how Julia helps Jet cook without being asked. Or how she and Spike slow-dance in the living room late at night when they think no one’s up. She wants to hate how these days, Spike only ever smells like cigarettes or sex. Or how every time he looks at Faye, it’s like he’s seeing her in color for the very first time.Or: No one on the Bebop has any clue what to do with a happy ending, least of all Faye.





	Songs About Jane

**Author's Note:**

> *Shows up 20 years late to the fandom with a Glock .49 and a boatload of feelings* This is my feeble attempt to retroactively apply modern feminist theory to an anime from the 90s that I first caught a glimpse of on Toonami at age nine and finally watched to completion at the age of it’s main character. Happy Anniversary, Space Cowboy.
> 
> This fic was inspired in no small part by **smithpepper's** Bebop fics, _You Want It Darker_ and _I Get Along Without You._
> 
> I worked on this fic, on an off, from February 2018 to February 2019, which is typically the longest I'll let myself hold onto a fic before I shove it out the nest.

1.

Faye won't be the first to say she hates it, but it's desperately quiet on the Bebop without Ed and Ein around. It’ll be quieter now with Spike gone, she thinks.

She watches the curve of Mars dim from the window of the Bebop, dragging hard on her cigarette to keep herself steady. She complains to Jet about Spike’s departure. Faye figures he won't come back this time, and she will certainly never admit how deeply the thought wounds her. Jet humors her, albeit impatiently, as they stare at the glacially moving planet far below them. When he asks about Julia, Faye scoffs and fights hard to keep the jealousy bound tight and in the pit of her stomach where it belongs, coiled tight around the loss she’s not letting herself feel. Two days ago, she'd been convinced Julia was nothing more than a name given to the intangible spector of Spike’s past. But, as fate would have it, Julia was as real as Faye’s beta tape. She was certainly a woman to worship and seek and chase across the solar system. She was certainly a ghost to die for.

The cigarette tastes bitter on Faye’s tongue as she searches for the words to describe Julia. _Ordinary. Beautiful. Dangerous._ Nothing fits right. Nothing fits but _Julia._

Jet makes a sound of acknowledgement and shifts his weight more fully to his uninjured leg. They say nothing, filling the cockpit with smoke and the weight of the conversation they refuse to have: What happens now?

The smoke hangs in the cockpit, nothing but their breaths to disturb the still air. A light begins to flash on the console, catching their attention. A moment later, a dull alarm rings. Faye straightens up. The hangar bay doors are open. Someone was docking.

Jet frowns and starts to say something about not being a parking garage when the ship pitches abruptly. Faye nearly flips over the comm center, and Jet is knocked on his ass. The metal of the Bebop sings around them from the blow.

Before she can talk herself out of a sentiment as stupid as panic, Faye spits out her cigarette and books it for the hanger.

Spike is there, climbing out from the horrifically docked Swordfish. She never expected to see the son of a bitch again. But the elation sours almost immediately into anger, mostly at herself. She never expected she’d be _relieved_ to see the son of a bitch again.

Spike locks eyes with her — feral and bloodied and hoisting from the Swordfish a limp body dressed in black leather.

Faye takes a short step back, a hand coming up to cover her mouth. She turns on her heel and races back the way she came. She hip-checks the door of the closet where they keep every medical supply they have and calls for Jet as she drags as much of it as she can carry to the living room.

Spike, damn his long legs, beats her. He lays an unconscious Julia out on the couch. His lavender jacket is a makeshift pressure dressing around her abdomen; her hair is strawberry-blonde with blood.

Faye dumps everything on the metal table and steps back when Jet hobbles in as quickly as he can. He immediately reaches for a shot of something in the med box and a pair of scissors.

“Did it go through?” he asks.

Spike crouches by Julia’s head and doesn’t answer.

“Spike! Did the bullet go through?”

Spike only stares at Julia like he’s made of stone.

Faye roughly shakes his shoulder. She gets no reaction. _“Spike!”_

Jet pulls the cap off a needle with his teeth and jams it into Julia’s thigh. He cuts through her jumpsuit with a clinical urgency. “Help me turn her over.”

Spike doesn’t move.

“Faye!”

Seething, she shoves herself between Spike and Julia and helps Jet lift, grunting with the effort. She watches Jet treat the exit wound with the same kind of industrial sealant jelly they used to patch gashes in the metal hull of Swordfish and Red Tail. The smell of burnt skin and hot plastic quickly reminds Faye why she never stuck around to watch Jet fix Spike’s injuries. She plugs her nose with one hand and turns her face away to quell the nausea.

In the space where Spike was, Spike is not.

Faye leaves Jet to his work and follows the trail of blood droplets to his room. She catches him throwing a torn jacket on over his bloodstained shirt and collecting enough guns and ammunition for a small army. Her heart clenches.

“Where are you going?” she demands. “What are you doing?”

He moves around the room robotically and doesn’t answer. More guns go into the bag. Six grenades. One box of cigarettes.

Faye grabs his arm. “Hey! Look at me, I’m—!”

Spike yanks himself from her grip and doesn’t so much as slow as he shoves past her into the hallway. He makes it halfway down the hall before Faye has the good sense to pull her gun on him. The clicking hammer echoes, loud and unmistakable.

“What is wrong with you? You wanted Julia back and you got her,” she shouts. “What more do you want? Are you really so tied to the past you can’t see anything else?”

That stops him. She levels the gun to his head, and her mouth keeps making sentences. They tumble over each other in a pathetic jumble — about her memory returning, about realizing all she has is the Bebop, that it’s her present and her future because nothing good came of her past — because she knows if she keeps talking, he’ll get angry or irritated and tell her _why._

He doesn't.

“Goddammit,” Faye hisses. “ _Say_ something!”

Spike shifts the weight of the weapons bag to his other shoulder. He doesn’t turn around.

“The past dies with Vicious,” he says without inflection. “The past dies with the Red Dragons. Either I wake up or I don’t, Faye.”

And like that, he’s off at a clip towards the hangar, gone and around the corner before the shock of it can set in, leaving Faye alone and pointing a loaded weapon at empty air.

If Faye were a stronger woman, she wouldn’t be angry. Anger implied betrayal. Betrayal implied _caring_ and _fear._ Faye had been lying to herself for so long now about how those thing did and did not scare her, that the rage suddenly lancing her through at Spike’s departure has her shaking. She unloads four rounds into the ceiling, then aims into Spike’s room and unloads the rest. When the bullets are out and she’s still furious — at him for leaving, at herself for letting him — she lowers herself down to the floor of his bedroom and doesn't let herself feel a single thing more.

That’s how Jet finds her some time later: curled up in a nest of broken mirror and scattered dirty clothes, staring at the cracked spine of a beaten-up martial arts paperback he’d left by his bed.

“Julia will live. Her pulse and blood pressure are holding, so no internal bleeding. An inch to her left or right and she’d be—” Jet stops at the sight of Faye. She turns away to keep her face hidden by hair. He says nothing, but she hears the quiet squeal the bearings in his metal arm make when he clenches his fist too tight.

“You’re scratched up,” he says instead, and whatever was in his voice before is gone. “Come on, before I put the bandages away.”

When Faye doesn’t move, he huffs and leaves. She stares at nothing and feels nothing and stubbornly refuses to picture Spike’s face.

Then Jet says, startled, “Oh. You’re up.”

Faye lifts her head. She hears a quiet groan, frail and feminine, from down the hall. Jet’s voice is pacifying as he explains who and where they are. He asks how we’re feeling and is answered by a soft, painful noise.

Faye grabs her gun. She's marching into the living room before she even realizes it's rage motivating her and not sympathy. Agony simmers in her blood, and a dark, wounded part of her wants to see what Julia is really made of. If it was worth Spike dying for.

Silently, Faye peers over the back of the couch, Glock held loosely at her side. Julia is bandaged hip to collarbone; the remains of her jumpsuit lay in a shredded pile on the floor. Julia’s hair spills over one end of the couch, the tips mottled with blood and touching the floor. She looks just like any unlucky target who got the business end of a bounty hunter’s gun. Faye finds some odd peace in that — until the woman turns from Jet to stare up at her.

Julia’s gray eyes are ethereal in the overhead light. The desperate look they give Faye rips straight through her haze of grief and anger, leaving only a terrible clarity.

Faye grips her gun in white knuckles and swears vehemently. If Jet calls after her, she doesn’t hear. She sprints for the hangar and Red Tail, bringing it roaringly to life and gunning it for Tharsis City. She screams curses into the empty cockpit until her throat is raw, but it doesn’t drown the voice in the back of her head telling her she’s too stupid and too late.

She follows a plume of gray smoke to the blown-off roof of a skyscraper and blesses Spike’s flair for the overdramatic. From the sky, she spots a figure lying facedown at the base of stairs and opens fire at the clusters of hired guns surrounding him, spraying wide and without mercy into the suits. Only when the last of them flees does she drop Red Tail down, still running, caging Spike protectively between it’s gatling guns.

It takes three good slaps to get any proof of life out of him. She gets a multisyllable sound that could be Julia’s name.

“Try again,” Faye grunts as she struggles to maneuver a gangly, boneless Spike into her cockpit without slipping on his blood.

“...m’dead?” he groans.

“Not for lack of trying, asshole.”

She radios Jet. He’s waiting for her in Bebop’s hanger when she pulls in. Between the two of them, they carry Spike to their miniature hospital. The low coffee table now hosts the too-tall Julia, whose feet hang off one end. Her eyes track them both as Jet lays Spike down on the already bloodstained couch. Faye’d been too worried to check any vitals before loading him onto Red Tail, but now she carefully counts the seconds between his breaths.

Attempting to keep her voice apathetic, she says, “Is he dying or what?”

Jet uncaps another shot and starts stripping Spike. “Did you see any of the damage inflicted?”

“No.”

“Then shut up and stay out of the way.”

The needle goes into Spike’s leg, as it did with Julia. Jet gets the last of his clothes off of him and Faye has to cover her mouth and nose to keep from gagging at the myriad of still bleeding wounds. Jet shifts him onto his side to inspect his back and Spike’s shallow breaths morph into a painful wheeze.

Faye grips the back of the couch. “What's happening?”

“His lung is collapsing.”

Faye looks up to the sound of Julia’s gravelly voice. She’s watching Spike and Jet through lidded eyes.

“You need to relieve the pressure in his chest cavity,” she continues.

Wordlessly, Jet pulls out the back end of the empty syringe and stabs the needle straight into Spike’s chest. There’s a hiss of air. The wheezing stops.

Julia’s tone is disturbingly mild. “He needs a blood transfusion or he’ll go into cardiac arrest.” She shifts, straining, and offers her arm into the space between herself and Spike. “We’re compatible. I’ve done it before.”

Jet throws her an annoyed look over his shoulder, then continues working Spike, his voice gruff. “You need whatever blood you've got left. I take any more from you, and the bullet wound is going to be the least of your problems.”

Julia’s eyes have yet to leave Spike’s face. “You can’t kill a dead woman.”

The anger inside Faye snaps. “Oh, for crying out loud,” she grouses, and it's a damn good thing annoyance and desperation have similar tones. She pulls off her red jacket. “Take from me. My blood type was on my cryo bracelet.”

Jet stops long enough to raise a brow at her before she yells, “Do it, Jet!”

He hooks them both up with needles at their inner elbows. A small plastic tube travels up from her arm to a blood bag that they hang off the stairs; another tube travels from the bag down into Spike. Faye refuses to acknowledge Julia’s watching gaze as she settles into a sitting position against the stairs under the blood bag. But watching Jet work on Spike makes her feel sick, so instead Faye leans back and watches her blood travel up through the tube. By focusing on that, she can almost tune out Spike’s pained moans and Jet’s intent murmurs. She watches the thin red line draw up towards the filling bag over her. It reminds her of something distinctive from her past — a crystal clear image of blood in zero gravity against a shattered moon — and she jolts awake with a start, not having realized she’d drifted asleep.

The only indication that time has passed are the dimmed lights in the common area. The metal rumbles under her as the Bebop flies. By the sound of it, they’re still in atmosphere. Stiff from presumably a couple hours sitting on the floor, Faye fumbles to press her back against the railing of the stairs and straighten up. The room spins in front of her.

“Take it easy.”

Faye spots Julia out of the corner of her hazy vision, sitting up on the table, one hand held loosely around her abdomen.

“Take it easy?” Faye mumbles. “I’m the only one on this ship who wasn't _shot_ today.”

The corner of Julia’s lip flicks up. Faye pretends not to notice. Instead, she tips her head back into the stairs and closes her eyes until the nausea passes and the tilt-a-whirl room levels out.

“What’d I miss?”

“He flatlined while you were out,” Julia says conversationally. “Your friend got a doctor. We didn't like the look of some of his stomach wounds.”

Everything about her statement — from _friend,_ to _doctor,_ to _we_ — feels alien, so Faye just nods. She glares at the rise and fall of Spike’s chest — short and laboured, but moving. The lunkhead _would_ die on her anyway, just to prove a point. Spike’s eyes dart around behind closed eyelids, still trapped in his last firefight.

Julia stands with a terrible groan and Faye’s wandering mind snaps to attention. “Hey! What do you think you're doing?! I'm not Jet. I can't fix you if you break yourself.”

“Give a girl some credit,” Julia grits out. “Won't be the first or last time I've been shot.”

With a stubbornness rivaling Spike’s, Julia staggers the short distance to the couch and all but collapses to sit at its very edge. She takes a moment to catch her breath, then carefully puts her feet up on the table. With delicate movements, she transitions Spike’s bandaged head to her lap.

For a long time, the silence stretches, unbroken, between them. The only sounds are the Bebop’s gentle rumblings as it flies and Spike’s staggered breaths. In the dim lights and adrenaline crash, sleep tries to reclaim Faye, but she fights it off this time. If Jet was unavailable and Spike was out, that made her captain of the Bebop by proxy. She smirks to herself.

“You know,” Faye says, “the way Spike and Vicious talked about you, I thought you’d be more bulletproof.”

Julia _hmmms_ an agreement.

Faye smacks her lips. “Got a cigarette?”

“Low blood pressure and nicotine don’t mix.”

“Me and lack of nicotine don’t mix either.”

Julia relents and gestures to the pile of Spike’s bloody clothes on the floor. Faye wrinkles her nose in disgust. Too prideful to back down, she crawls on her hands and knees as far as the blood bag’s plastic tubing allows and searches the ruins of Spike’s jacket for a box of smokes and a lighter. Settling back against the stairs, Faye blows her smoke straight up into the air.

“Do you have a favorite fairy tale?” Julia asks into the quiet.

“I have a _least_ favorite,” Faye says around a cigarette. “Sleeping beauty.”

Julia runs her fingers through Spike’s hair, and Faye pretends she isn’t watching. “Have you heard the fairy tale of the tiger cat who lived a million lives?”

Faye frowns. “I don't like fairy tales.”

“You might like this one,” Julia says. She reclines back and closes her eyes, her hands still moving idly over Spike. “There was once a tiger cat who was cursed to live a million lives. Upon dying, he would always be reborn and live again. His many lives blurred together with repetition, until the day when the tiger cat fell in love with a rare albino cat. Fearing the time when she would pass on and he could not go with her, the tiger cat stayed by her side and tended to her daily. But unbeknownst to him, the albino cat, too, had been gifted with a million lives. Like him, she could live and die and live again. She kept the truth from him for fear of discovering that their love was only meant for one lifetime and no more.”

“Are there dragons in this?” Faye interrupts, bored. “Does anyone turn into a vampire?”

Julia’s hands freeze in Spike’s hair. She stays quiet.

Feeling a rare guilt, Faye mutters, “I was trying to—”

Spike suddenly arches off the couch, convulsing. The vertigo slams into Faye as she scrambles to her feet, but by then Julia has already turned him sideways, holding his head steady as he thrashes with seizures.

“Stay there,” Julia warns. “He's going to need as much blood as you can spare.”

It takes a minute or two, too long, for the spasms to wind down. When Spike goes limp, Julia turns him once more onto his back. He makes a sound then, like he’d made to Faye before she loaded him on the airship.

“I'm here,” Julia soothes. She nods at Faye that she can sit down and, carefully, Faye releases her deathgrip on the railing and lowers herself back down to the floor. Julia tweaks the needle in his arm to get the blood transfusion flowing again.

Spike’s hand twitches like he's reaching and Julia smooths a hand over his face. “You're not going anywhere,” she promises in a soft voice. “Hell’s all booked and heaven doesn't know what to do with you.”

He makes a distressed sound as if he actually heard her and Julia laughs lightly. She starts petting his hair in earnest and begins to hum a song. Bluesy and full of homesick and perfectly on key. It calms Spike and he fades into a deeper sleep, his eyes no longer flickering.

Faye is struck by the sensation that she shouldn’t be here to witness this, that it's some kind of invasion of privacy to watch them. Her blood buzzes with the nicotine and the impulse to run, but she’s tied to Spike through the transfusion. She glances away, to her own self, and realizes the entirety of her yellow jumpsuit is now a nasty, mottling red-brown. She’ll have to burn it.

 

* * *

2.

Jet gets them out of Mars as soon as he can. There’s no specific destination he has in mind, as long as it’s out of reach of the long arm of the Syndicate.

The Red Dragon doctor Julia had had put Jet in touch with had let something slip as they stabilized Spike. Right now, he said, the Red Dragon Syndicate was headless, limbless, and castrated, but it wouldn’t remain that way for long; White Tigers struck at wounded animals. By the nervous looks he kept shooting Spike and Julia as he treated them, Jet had a bad feeling about where the two of them ranked on the remaining hierarchy. The feeling only sunk when Jet paid the doctor’s unnervingly low fee and the spindly man made it very clear to enunciate his name and declare that any friend of Spike and Julia was a friend of his. Jet got the Bebop airborne the moment the doctor’s feet stepped off his ship.

That was eight days ago. They’re still flying towards the outer edges of the system and they’ll need food and gas soon. Which means they’ll need to catch a bounty. Which means Spike needs to wake the hell up.

Jet gives up the pretense of steering the ship and kicks the autopilot lever. Still limping, he gradually makes his way to the common area. He finds Faye hunched over in the seat beside Spike with her back to the door, wearing a cotton house dress and smoking a cigarette. Her attention is evident in how her puffs of smoke come in time to the rise and fall of Spike’s chest. She turns a half-peeled orange over and over in her hands, and in the clinging haze of smoke, Faye looks so much younger.

Jet leans against the doorframe. “You can’t will the son of a bitch to wake up. You should know that by now.”

She jumps at his voice and whirls around. The private distress disappears behind a wall of annoyance. “Jesus, Jet! Clang your arm or something before you walk in a room! Christ!”

“How's he doing today?”

“Still kicking, unfortunately.”

“Says the woman who saved his life.”

“Oh, bite me.”

Jet arcs an eyebrow as Faye grinds out the cigarette and begins to eviscerate her orange. He watches her for a long minute, before voicing what’s been on his mind for the better part of the last week.

“You went after him,” he says, stern. “After he deliberately told us he needed to handle this on his own.”

Faye scoffs. “Spike’s like a toddler. He doesn’t know what the hell he wants.”

Jet smirks and says nothing. Faye’s breeziness gives way to a glimmer of worry when he doesn’t answer, and she turns in her seat to face him.

“What?” she snaps. “Spit it out, Jet.”

“Try again, Faye,” Jet says matter-of-factly. “Why'd you go back for him?”

Faye waves a hand dismissively. “You would’ve done the same thing if your leg—“

“I wouldn't have,” Jet interrupts. “I told you that already. And Spike sure as hell wouldn't have done the same thing for you either. So, third time’s the charm. Why'd you go?”

Faye shifts in her seat uncomfortably, then turns her back to Jet. “What does it matter?”

Against his better judgement, Jet lets his voice go soft. He betrays just a little of that hope he’s kept locked tight inside of him for so long. “It matters to me.”

Sticking her nose up, Faye declares, “I didn't feel like being forced to find new partners. Happy now?”

It’s the most he’ll get out of Faye, and why he expected any different, Jet isn’t completely sure. He sighs and glances over to the empty seat where Julia had been sitting. “You throw her out the airlock yet?”

Faye resumes tearing into her orange and doesn’t answer. But she doesn’t leave the room either. Jet glances towards the hallway leading to the bathroom and heads off that way at a measured pace. He finds Julia coming back down in the direction of the common area, using the wall as support. Faye had vehemently refused to lend Julia clothes to ruin with her bloody bandages, so she’s wearing Spike’s oversized blue sleep shirt.

“Here.” Jet comes over and carefully loops Julia’s arm across his shoulders. He’s mildly surprised that she lets him. Spike usually fell on his face at least twice before he conceded.

Julia smiles at him through a wince. “What a gentleman.”

Something in Julia’s easy trust reminds Jet of an old saying in the ISSP. “They say in the vastness of space, all you have is whoever’s at your side. Somehow, I got into the business of taking in strays, so it comes with the territory.”

Julia’s face is curtained by her hair, but he hears the grin in her voice. “I can see why he likes you.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’d like the bastard better if he didn’t constantly show up bleeding like a sieve,” Jet grumbles. He adjusts Julia’s weight at his side as the two of them hobble down the hallway. “I've had to teach myself more about medicine to keep Spike alive than I ever had to learn at the academy.”

Keeping her eyes on her feet as they walk, Julia doesn’t respond right away. When she does speak, her voice sounds oddly detached.

“Did Spike ever tell you what I did with the Syndicate?”

Jet suppresses his frown. “No. But I can guess.”

“He ever mention me at all?”

“Only as an excuse to run off and do something stupid.”

Julia huffs a laugh. She's pensive for a moment. “You must find me strange. A ghost dragged back to life to haunt your ship.”

Jet would never admit that he’d long suspected Julia was a figment of Spike’s imagination — a name given to the past Spike chose to wear around his throat like an albatross. Even after patching her wounds and hearing her voice, something about Julia still strikes Jet as unreal. Ordinary, as Faye had said, but in a way that drew you in like a well of gravity. A living black hole.

Jet plays it off. “After Faye set up a room and never left, women don't really surprise me anymore.”

“Herder of cats that you are.”

“Exactly.”

“Well, what can I do?” She looks up at him expectantly. “I'm not much good with engines, but I can shoot and fly in a straight line. I won't be able to pay rent right away—”

Her sincerity unseats him. “No, it's fine. Really. Everyone just...does what they can.”

Julia nods absently. “I'll carry my weight.”

“As long as you need it, the _Bebop’s_ your port. I’m used to cooking for four anyway.” He sighs. “At least until one of these fools runs off again chasing greener pastures.”

Julia slows to a stop. “You know it’s more than that,” she says. “Anywhere that Spike will rest his head, he trusts with his life.”

Jet laughs aloud, but cuts short when he sees that Julia is dead serious. The humor curdles in his throat and there’s no stopping the scowl now. He thinks that Spike disappeared into a firefight with no backup and a deathwish. He thinks that after years working together, Spike fully intended to go on a suicide mission without so much as a goodbye or a second thought to anyone but himself.

“Three years is a long time, Julia,” he says gravely. “People change.”

Julia’s smile is bittersweet as she starts to walk again. “I know.”

Jet changes the topic. “What _did_ you do for the Syndicate?”

“That’s a story for another day. When I can drink.”

“I’ll hold you to that.”

“Please do.”

There’s a startled yelp and a groaning from the living room just as they arrive. Faye breezes by the two of them, flushed pink and vigorously wiping her mouth. She bites out the announcement that the lunkhead is awake.

Spike’s eyes are open, blinking in dazed disbelief at the seat where Faye had been sitting. He turns his head to the sound of Jet and Julia’s laborious arrival and freezes.

Jet says something about welcoming him back to the party, but Spike only has eyes for Julia. He clumsily attempts to stand and Julia steps away from Jet’s side to sloppily catch him halfway to the floor. Like a drowning man, Spike latches on to her and collapses into her arms, burying his face in her hair, saying her name over and over and over again. Julia shushes him with whispered promises that she is really here — that _he_ is really here, too.

Between staggered breaths, Spike chokes out an apology so feeble, Jet can almost tell himself he misheard it. In all the time he’d known Spike, nothing close to the words ‘I’m sorry’ had ever come out of his mouth.

Julia catches Jet’s eye over the top of Spike’s head, and he wonders which of them really knows Spike better. Or if he ever knew Spike Spiegel at all.

 

* * *

3.

Faye wants to hate Julia. She _really_ does. She wants to hate how Julia helps Jet cook without being asked. Or how she and Spike slow-dance in the living room late at night when they think no one’s up. She wants to hate how these days, Spike only ever smells like cigarettes or sex. Or how everytime he looks at Faye, it’s like he’s seeing her in color for the very first time.

When he smiles at Julia, it reaches his eyes — something Faye never noticed his smile _wasn’t_ doing before. When he talks with Julia, Faye has to repress the urge to gag because they’re the same fucking person. They laugh at the same ridiculous jokes and use the same obscure references, and when they spar, they’re like dance partners underwater, in identical form, never landing a clean blow on each other.

Faye wants to hate how easily Julia is forgiven when she screws up her first few bounties by accidentally killing the target, because, apparently, getting someone _not_ to kill on sight is just as hard as the opposite. Faye wants to hate how Jet and Spike take every opportunity to regale Julia with stories of chasing bounties and how Julia shares her own stories of living three years undercover and how Spike hangs onto every word of them.

The only thing more incredible than how whipped Spike is in Julia’s presence is how much he doesn’t seem to mind it in the slightest: not when Julia takes the Swordfish out on a whim or steals his Jericho right off his hip for cleaning. Not even when Faye and Jet harass him mercilessly about it. He crosses his arms and shrugs his shoulders and calmly says he can fight providence or he can fight Julia, not both.

God, Faye wants to hate how Julia gets away with a hundred times more than Faye ever could, just because she’s _mature_ and _elegant_ and so casually _lethal_. She wants to hate how Julia makes her feel like the ugly stepsister.

But then Faye runs into Spike in the middle of the night. She’s on her way to the common area for a smoke because she _knows_ she’s paranoid if she's imagining the smell of sex on her sheets. He’s on his way back from the bathroom in nothing but his pajama pants.

“Gaujo.”

“Romani.”

And they keep walking. Then—

“Faye?”

She stops, turns barely. Waits.

For a moment, Spike says nothing. His jaw works soundlessly, as if he’s figuring out how to pronounce words in a language he’s never spoken.

“Thank you,” he murmurs.

Faye turns fully to face him, to tease him, but finds that Spike is looking at her like she’s the only thing he can see for miles.

Her traitorous heart turns seventeen again. Her mouth stammers, “Don’t mention it.”

And Spike smiles with a, “If you insist,” and ducks into his room. Into his and _Julia’s_ room.

Faye takes her cigarette on the bridge, but her lungs won't breathe the smoke in right. For the life of her, she can’t figure out what’s different.

 

* * *

4.

With Julia’s help they manage to grab a sizable bounty. A weapons smuggler worth fifty million woolongs, split four ways. Jet extracates his cut first and goes for groceries and supplies before a meteor hits the Bebop or one of the others can cheat him out of his money. Among the cups of noodles and frozen vegetables, he finds a Venusian stall with affordable steaks that don't immediately appear to be dog or cat meat. He buys a few with the intent to grill them the moment he’s back on the ship, just in case he’s lost the skill after so long. For the first time in what feels like years, they have a full tank of gas and new engine parts and _real_ food. Jet doesn’t dwell on it too much, less he jinx the whole thing.

For the time being, Jet ignores the yelling coming from the common room and makes a beeline for the kitchen. He’d left the other three to work out the remaining percentages and is only mildly worried about returning to some sort of mutiny.

Once the meat is prepared and cooking on the grill, Jet meanders over towards the common area to find Faye and Spike bickering about what they contributed on the mission and what sorts of favors, smokes, and meals they still each owe the other. Faye’s argument seems to be that this somehow factors into the breakdown of profit. The two of them are shouting over cartons of cigarettes they’d lent each other nearly half a year ago.

Jet crosses his arms and shakes his head as he watches, unnoticed, from the doorway. There’s something in their fighting now that wasn’t there before: an almost genuine affection. Jet spent so many months straining to hear that note in their voices that he almost can’t trust his ears that it’s there now.

For a woman in heels, Julia moves like a ghost. She appears at Jet’s elbow with a soft tutting and he nearly yelps. Her expression is amused as she watches Faye and Spike.

“Not even once, huh?”

Jet raises a brow at her, but Julia merely motions to Spike and Faye as the two of them continue being too focused on bickering to notice their observers.

Jet snorts. “God, I almost wish they had and gotten it out of their systems.”

It takes him a beat to remember who he’s talking to. Julia waves off his stumbling apology.

“It’s alright. Really.” Her expression is complacent. “I’m glad he had someone.”

“Not many women I know who could say that.”

Julia chuckles. “Like you’ve known any women like me.”

Jet watches Spike concede to some borrowed ammunition on Ganymede, but insists it isn’t worth _nearly_ as much as Faye is claiming. Faye says she’s charging interest, so Spike counters that he’s taking her fancy dress rental as just that: a rental. With overages.

About three weeks into Julia’s stay, Spike had come to talk with Jet about not saying goodbye. Whether it was an apology, an explanation, or something else, neither of them will ever know. Jet cut him off and asked if he planned on doing it again. Spike said he’d make no promises, but he’d try to give Jet two weeks notice before getting himself killed so he could rent out the room. Jet called him an asshole; Spike called him a shit nurse because he was still having the occasional seizure. Spike hadn't run off longer than a day or two anywhere since.

Almost to himself, Jet says, “I don’t know who the hell Faye dragged back onto my ship, but it sure wasn’t any Spike Spiegel I knew.”

Julia looks over at Jet thoughtfully. “That’s exactly who she dragged back.”

Spike makes to put a stack of woolongs in his jacket. Faye leaps across the table to stop him, shoving her hand in his shirt to get to them. They topple over the back of the couch like angry cats.

Julia raises a brow at Jet.

He shrugs. “Don’t look at me. Ask them.”

“Spike said he only ever gets his gun cleaned by professionals.”

“Uh huh. And Faye?”

“Said her left hand had more dexterity than the gaujo had in his entire body.” Julia smirks. “A false statement, I assure you.”

Jet turns scarlet and Julia can’t help but laugh, giving them away. Spike and Faye look up to the entryway as Jet quickly announces the food is ready and hurries back to the kitchen.

 

* * *

5.

A two million woolong bounty comes up on the Bebop’s radar for a small-time computer hacker on the outskirts of some backwater Venusian city. It’s an easy job, something any of them could do after lunch if they had the energy.

Spike doesn't feel like mustering up the energy. After two bowls of Julia’s Martian cooking, he could fall asleep on the couch as easy as anything. He had more woolongs to his name at present than he could ever remember, and a chump-change bounty was rarely enough to talk him out of a good nap anyway.

Jet says he has to run a full diagnostic on the Bebop and heads to the engine room. Faye’s favorite program is coming on soon, so she’s not going anywhere either. It's Julia who cleans up her plate upon reading the bulletin and announces that she could stand to get some practice in.

With a yawn, Spike makes himself comfortable on the couch and distractedly dangles the key to the Swordfish off one finger. Julia swipes it from him with a kiss to his temple and walks off towards the hangar. Spike shuts his eyes to whatever mindless advertisement is playing on the TV and settles in.

Straddled across the back of the chair to his left, Faye huffs. “You know she could steal your ship and fly off to god-knows-where without any of us finding out.”

Without opening his eyes, Spike says, “She could probably clear our safe and vent our cooling system, too, on her way out.”

Faye scoffs, unapologetic. “Nothing good ever comes out of trusting other people. I’m just saying.”

Spike stands to stretch and cracks every joint in his body, something he knows Faye hates. “Nothing good ever comes out of trusting _you,_ Faye. There’s a difference.”

He doesn’t hear her response as he ambles towards the hanger, though he’s confident he’s hit a nerve a mile-wide, just like he’s confident he’ll return to some sort of petty revenge. Just like he’s confident he’ll return at all.

He catches Julia as she’s starting up the Swordfish and knocks cordially on it’s hull. “Got room for one more?”

Without taking her eyes off the system checks, Julia responds, “You’ll have to sit in my lap.”

Spike grins. “That a warning or a promise?”

Julia waves him up and he squeezes himself into the space behind his own pilot’s chair. Resting his chin on Julia’s shoulder, Spike watches her start up the ship. She taxis out onto the hull to unfurl their wings, then takes off into the stars.

“I didn’t need the backup,” Julia says into the ensuing quiet. Spike shrugs and wraps his arms around her stomach and the pilot’s chair between them.

“Maybe I needed the company,” he admits, turning his face into the faint smell of lily in her hair.

Wordlessly, Julia releases one hand off the Swordfish and reaches back to lightly scratch his scalp. Spike closes his eyes to the speed and the view of space, letting himself exist in the hum of the engine and the warmth of Julia.

They arrive on the planet’s surface thirty minutes later, at a one-streetlight town covered in slowly drifting pollen. Spike waits in the zipcraft and smokes as Julia questions the motel receptionist about her target’s whereabouts. The more he stays out of the way, he figures, the more he can feasibly argue that Julia keep the full two million.

He’s about to drift back into his nap when Julia finally exits the building. She flashes him a hand and Spike has to squint to see the pale pink key card held between two fingers. In her other hand is a small white box. His brows knit in confusion as she walks to a room two doors from the lobby, unlocks it, and goes inside without drawing her gun. Despite promising himself he’d hang back, the curiosity gets the better of him. He hops out of the zipcraft and walks to the motel room. The door is ajar.

Julia’s black jumpsuit lays in a pile on the floor by the foot of the bed. Spike finds her twisting her hair up into a ponytail, standing in front of the bathroom mirror wearing only some lacey thing that barely covers her ass.

His mouth goes dry when Julia eyes him over her shoulder through her lashes.

Taking her by the hips, Spike turns her to face him and kisses her. Julia tangles her fingers in his hair and hikes her leg up to his hip. Spike pulls her other leg up into a carry and deposits them both gracelessly onto the dusty bed. As Julia works on his pants, Spike shrugs off his jacket and speedily unbuttons his shirt. Julia pulls the belt from his slacks before tossing them to the floor and Spike bends to recapture her mouth. She surprises him when she expertly rolls them over, perching above him with her knees resting on either side of his ribs.

With a look to level civilizations, she snaps his belt taut between both her hands.

“Same rules?” she asks.

Unhurried, Spike lifts his hands up above his head, through the rusted iron railings of the headboard. “I remember,” he says.

She fastens his hands tight enough to grind together the bones of his wrists. She remembered the rules then, too.

Julia kisses slow and rides him hard — never too slow and never fast enough. She keeps a punishing rhythm that walks Spike along a knife’s edge, dragging her breasts up his chest and whispering dirty, terrible things that pull at the fraying edges of his control. Spike resists in delirious anguish though his shoulders ache and his arms are nearly numb in the belt’s unforgiving bind.

Julia dances her nails up his side, stopping over the fresh scar of a bullet wound from their most recent bounty on Ganymede. “Does it hurt, soldier?”

Spike shakes his head.

Without breaking her stride, Julia grabs a fistfull of his hair and yanks Spike’s head back, forcing him to stare at his bound wrists. She bites down on his exposed adam’s apple, hard, and Spike grunts. Her nails on the other hand drag over the injury, threatening to reopen it. Spike winces.

“And now?” she asks mildly.

“I think you’ve lost your touch,” he jibes. Her thumb digs into the wound. Spike gasps her name — which he knows is the wrong answer — and Julia draws blood. She covers his pained yell with a kiss and proceeds to fuck him harder.

“Does it hurt, soldier?” she asks again.

If he says yes, it’ll stop. That was how they used to play the game. But now, the pain means he’s alive. The pleasure means _she’s_ alive. He never wants this to stop.

Spike says no, and Julia dismantles him, body and soul. He lets it happen, lets himself succumb, until every element that made him Spike Spiegel unravels into a ball of string for Julia to play with. When he comes at last, bleeding and gasping and begging her name, his brain turns to brilliant static, pockmarked with the ghosts of faint neon butterflies.

Spike floats in the nothingness that follows, a dead man adrift at sea. Eventually, he becomes aware of Julia at his side with a small first aid kit. She cleans up the blood. He grits his teeth to keep still as Julia disinfects the re-opened bullet wound in his side with a travel-sized bottle of whiskey and stitches it up with a clinical diligence. Salve goes on the new cuts, muscle relaxant on the bruises, and two tablets of something vaguely cherry-tasting are tipped into his mouth for him to chew on.

When Spike is patched up, Julia cleans herself with a wet towel and settles onto the bed, curling against his least injured side. His arms still indisposed, Spike tangles his legs with hers and bathes in the lasting silence. He’d missed this like nothing else.

“There _was_ a two million bounty on a guy, right?” he asks.

“We missed him by an hour,” Julia answers lazily. She nuzzles his chest, kissing over his heart. Kisses gradually trail up his throat to his chin, his cheeks, his lashes. Brushing her nose against his, she looks down into his eyes. “Will you tell me a fairytale, Spike?”

This was part of the game, too. They both knew to play. Still, it’d been so long.

“Do I have to?”

“Tell me a fairytale,” Julia repeats, kissing his lips, “or sing me a lullaby.”

Spike sighs and nods. Julia settles down back on his chest, tracing the borders of fresh bandages covering the damage of her hands. Spike takes a moment to think, then starts.

“Once upon a time, there was a swimming bird. He longed for the sea when he flew and longed for the sky when he swam. He was a creature who lived between lives but belonged to neither. One day, while he swam, he came upon a beautiful phoenix in disguise. He fell in love with her, but she died and he was lost, not knowing that one day she would return. When she reappeared in the night sky, the swimming bird sought her out with a vow to never leave her side again. Together, they drank the ocean dry until all that existed was the sky. The end.”

Julia _hmms_ in approval. “Was the swimming bird happy then?”

“He was,” Spike says, kissing the top of Julia’s head. The rules of the game followed, he settles back to rest, letting his mind drift to blissful nothing.

Until Julia says, “What became of the fish in the sea?”

Spike blinks away the creeping drowsiness and lifts his head to look down at her. “Uh, they all died. Probably.”

Still trailing his new scars, Julia stares at the far end of the room. “What will the swimming bird and the phoenix eat now that all the fish are gone?”

Spike drops his head back to the pillows with a puff of annoyance. “I don’t know, Julia. It’s a stupid story I made up on the spot.”

Julia takes a moment to respond. “Of course.”

Her tone doesn’t go unnoticed. Spike almost asks her what’s wrong, rules of the game be damned, but she lifts off his chest and kisses him again. She keeps kissing him, letting the heat grow until Spike is wholly preoccupied with pulling against his restraints in a desperate need to touch her.

Against Julia’s mouth, he whispers, “Hands free, please.”

Julia taps his lips and shakes her head. She nips at the deep bite mark Spike can feel bruising at his throat. “You weren’t quiet enough before, soldier.”

Spike lets her kiss him breathless, before biting her lip to get her attention.

“Hey,” he murmurs slowly. “I love you. You know, right?”

Julia sits up and draws bright red highways down his chest with her nails. “I know.”

 

* * *

6.

The life of a cowboy largely consists of endless days floating through space, sometimes with only the vaguest hint of a destination in mind until a bounty makes itself available. The restlessness settles into the permanent buzz of a mangy dog racing on a hamster wheel until it can't run anymore. Then the boredom sets in. Then it doesn’t matter who the company is, as long as it’s a breathing thing other than yourself in the vastness of space.

Faye learned this early on, as she’s sure both Spike and Jet had to. As she’s sure Julia has by now. Faye hits this point about three days shy of their drift towards Saturn. She wanders out of her room after two straight days of reading pulp novels and eating dehydrated ice cream and rewatching her beta tape. Back when she was Poker Alice and a solo act, she used to last much longer before the itch of human contact found its way into her system. That window of time seems to have shrunk significantly since joining the Bebop. For all her mind’s wanderings, that’s something Faye refuses to put much stock into puzzling out.

She saunters along the ship’s corridors to the hanger, humming a song she half-remembers as she double checks that all three zipcrafts are present before getting any hopes up. Not that she really expected them to take their zipcrafts out this far from any decent civilization, but it’s nice to know the others are in a logical mood.

Faye makes her way to the common room then, gazing down from the top of the stairs to find Jet is trying to fix their television screen, muttering to himself. Spike is on the couch with one arm draped languidly over Julia. They watch Jet fix the screen as if it’s the most interesting thing that’s happened since they left Eureka, which probably isn’t far from the truth.

“It’s in times like these I miss the crap out of Ed,” Jet grunts, manipulating a screwdriver into a circuit board.

Julia leans into Spike and whispers in his ear, “Was Ed the genius kid or the genius dog?”

Spike chuckles and whispers back, “Your guess is as good as mine.”

Faye abruptly decides she doesn’t need _that_ much of their company. Telegraphing her presence as much as possible, Faye takes a seat exactly where she is on the stairs and pulls out a box of smokes. Not a one of them so much as turns around.

Jet gets the screen working just as Big Shot 2.0 comes on. With a proud huff, Jet sits himself down on the solo chair as the new show hosts — a redheaded girl and a Mexican man speaking in jive — get the show running with the promise of big news.

 _“Now, we know everyone’s had their ear to the grind for info on the newest hot ticket bounty this season,”_ the redhead chirps. _“And we’ve got great news!”_

 _“We’ve got names and deets on the downright fool scoundrels responsible for that whack shoot-out in Tharsis City a while ago,”_ the Mexican man says with a gangster hand gesture. To the surprise of everyone on the Bebop, Spike and Julia’s mugshots appear on the screen side-by-side. _“And here they are! The ISSP is offering a bounty of 75 million woolongs, dog! Each!”_

Faye’s cigarette falls out of her mouth.

 _“That’s right, cowboys! The bounty has been set for one of our very own! The remaining two highest ranked members of the Red Dragon Syndicate!”_ The redhead sticks out her chest. _“That’s a whooping 150 million woolongs for whoever catches the pair!”_

The man makes a pistol shape with his hands. _“Get cracking, yo! A Bonnie & Clyde deal like this won’t _ — _”_

Jet shuts the screen off with the remote.

No one says anything.

An odd strain hangs in the air as Faye looks between Spike and Julia, doing the math in her head because she’s a piece of trash and can’t help herself. That was half her debt in _one_ job. It wouldn’t even be that hard, she realizes. They all ate together; they slept in the same damn hallway. A sedative in Jet’s cooking could put them right out. A delayed explosion on the Swordfish after takeoff and she could tow it to the nearest police station with little resistance. She has about three gambits off the top of her head that she’s sure could slip past even Spike’s worldliness.

Yet it's the thought of a Bebop without Spike that stops Faye in her tracks.

Faye tries to imagine the ship without the smell of Spike’s cigarettes, without the sound of his jazz records playing muted through his door. What was the Bebop without Spike’s legs dangling over the edge of the couch or his silly-looking martial art forms in the middle of the night or the Swordfish nestled between Red Tail and Hammerhead in the hangar. A Bebop without Spike felt like no Bebop at all.

Jet shakes his head and sighs loudly, shattering the quiet.

“You know, it’s a good thing we like you two so much,” he says, straightening up. “A hundred and fifty million woolongs could buy me about three new Bebops.”

Neither Spike nor Julia answer. Faye realizes with a sinking feeling that Jet isn’t who they’re worried about.

“You’d only get 75 with your half of the cut, old man,” Faye interjects, keeping her tone light and airy. “I could buy a pony of my own to bet on for 75 mil.”

From her vantage point on the stairs, she watches the hand Spike has on the back of the couch relax ever so slightly. But Julia has her hand on her thigh, near her holster, and that doesn’t move.

“Wow, a pony of your very own,” Spike says drolly over his shoulder. “You can lose money even faster.”

Faye scoffs. “It’d be prettier to look at than you, lunkhead. Probably smell better, too.”

Spike grins and Julia’s hand slips from her thigh to the couch. The tension doesn’t dissipate completely, but it never really does. Everyone settles a little more bonelessly into their seats and Faye’s just secretly grateful that they’re mostly past the point of letting money come between whatever the four of them have become. What was $150 million woolongs compared to Spike’s grouchy patronizing and Julia’s envious flawlessness, anyway?

...a whole fucking lot, Faye’s rational brain argues.

“We’ll have to lay off the bounties for a while,” Jet says resolutely. “Most of the cowboy circuit knows we run together. They may mistake me and Faye for the negotiable type.”

“That’s going to put a dent on our wallets,” Spike laments.

“I know,” Jet grumbles. “Unless you want to turn yourselves in and save us the trouble, we’re going to need to lie low.”

Faye moans. Laying low meant no big cities or ports. It meant longer stretches of drifting through uncharted space with heavily preserved food and no decent television channels and no company but the three of them. Why was it a bad idea for her to turn them in again?

Spike tips his head back. “You hear that, Romani? No more ponies,” he sing-songs. “You might actually have to hold onto your money for longer than a day.”

“And you might actually have to keep all your blood _inside_ your body, Gaujo,” Faye fires back sweetly. “Since hospitals are out of the question with the pretty penny on your head.”

“Knock it off, you two,” Jet intervenes in a tired voice. “It’s going to suck for everyone.”

Julia speaks up for the first time since the show ended, looking thoughtful. “You know,” she says to Spike, “with a couple calls, I might be able to get us into a hospital in Alba City for facial reconstructive surgery.”

Spike picks his feet up onto the coffee table. “Good luck picking out something better to look at every day than this.”

Faye rolls her eyes and angles away to light up another cigarette. Under her breath, she mutters something about Julia being the latest in a long line of women to consider rearranging Spike’s face.

Julia turns in her seat and asks, with a perfectly straight face, if Faye thinks Spike would look good with Jet’s square chin. Faye chokes on her cigarette, laughing. Says if _that’s_ what they’re doing, she’ll put down half the money herself, her debts be damned. If they can match Jet’s receding hairline, she’ll pay extra.

Julia snorts unattractively. Faye glances over, smug to have forced such a noise out of the perfect Julia, only to find Spike and Jet staring back at her, wide-eyed, like she’s grown another head.

“What the holy hell was that?” Spike asks incredulously, looking between Faye and Julia.

“It’s Tamil,” Julia explains. “An old Earth language. My grandfather spoke it at home.”

Faye’s eyes dart to each of them, lost. _“What's_ Tamil?”

“That entire conversation you just had with Julia,” Jet says, confounded. “I didn't know you spoke another language.”

Neither did Faye.

Most of her memory had returned in the initial deluge. There were still holes, however, despite other bits and pieces having emerged over the ensuing months in scattered thunderstorms of images and emotions while she ate or hunted bounty. The fact that Faye spoke a second, partly archaic, language with enough fluency to not realize she was code-switching was _brand new_ information.

She plays it off, standing to go. “Well, how else am I supposed to talk shit about the two of you when you're around.” Grinding out her cigarette on a step, she heads for Red Tail without any further explanation. As it often did when a sudden memory came back, space helped her sort out the messiness.

The quiet sound of careful heels against a metal floor follow Faye to the hangar. She turns to glare as Julia hoists herself effortlessly up into Spike’s zipcraft beside her.

“I don’t think we’re that far off from Rhea,” Julia says. “Jet agreed we should grab some supplies if we’re committed to going to ground.” She looks over at Faye. “You’re free to come if you want.”

“I'll pass,” Faye says curtly.

She starts up Red Tail and takes off out into the lull of space, picking a star at random and shooting towards it. As Faye flies with the comforting rumble of Red Tail in her ears, she digs, and memories of Tamil drift back to her: learning the language as an elective in school; practicing with her great-uncle at Christmas dinner; the emergency message repeating on loop in both languages, over the screams of passengers as she faded into a seventy-year sleep.

Julia’s voice comes crackling over her radio and Faye snaps back to the present. _“I’ve had my suspicions about you since Spike told me about your beta tape.”_

Faye looks up to see the Swordfish flying just above her, matching her speed. It’s unnerving to reconcile Julia’s voice coming over Spike’s frequency, with Spike’s zipcraft in her sights. Faye’s knuckles turn white on the handlebars of Red Tail, wondering what, exactly, Spike told her.

 _“There are scant few paper records left from when my grandfather was bookkeeper for the Red Dragon Syndicate,_ ” Julia goes on. _“There’s one in particular that mentions a family with very deep pockets from Singapore who died in a shuttle accident. It said their daughter survived and was put into cryo-sleep.”_

Faye stares at the underbelly of the Swordfish, unblinking — torn between the horror that her family was tied to the very thing that had destroyed Spike and Julia’s lives, and the flicker of hope that something concrete of her past might still remain.

As if reading her mind, Julia says, _“I might know where those paper records wound up.”_

Of everything that had come back to Faye, there was still plenty lost between the cracks. The names of her parents hadn’t been something her frozen memory had recalled. The latter part of her teenage years were a blur, and for the life of her, she couldn't remember what the three of them where doing on that doomed space shuttle in the first place. Her childhood home was gone; most of her friends were now dead. All she had of her past was a beta tape she was disintegrating with every rewatch. The promise of any further proof dangled in front of her like a carrot on a stick.

It was too good to be true.

The jolt of realization snaps through her, and Faye furiously jabs at her radio. “You’re trying to get rid of me!”

 _“What?”_ Julia sounds surprised. _“Faye, I was offering to go with you.”_

“You’re scared I’ll turn you in,” Faye accuses. “That’s why you’re telling me this, isn’t it?! You want me out of the way!”

There’s a beat of silence, before Julia’s voice crackles through evenly. _“Why would I want you out of the way?”_

It takes Faye half a second to realize she can't answer that. She grits her teeth.

 _“This is a thank you, Faye,”_ Julia’s voice says softly. _“The only thank you I can think of._ _You saved my ass on Mars. You saved Spike’s life.”_

Faye bristles. “I didn’t do it for you.”

_“I know. So let me pay you for your service.”_

Faye thinks it over for a minute longer. It's simpler talking to Julia over the radio when Faye doesn’t have to look her in the face. She digs through her memories for that second language, Tamil, and finds the words as easy as anything. In her family’s tongue, Faye tells Julia she already knows her past: it’s a dead end. Nothing good can come from digging. She already made that mistake once.

“All that brings is tragedy,” she finishes resolutely. “I’m not leaving the Bebop.”

Julia doesn’t answer and Faye fights the impulse to turn sharp and try to lose Spike’s ship. A futile effort, she knows — Spike had proven on more than one occasion that the Swordfish was the faster zipcraft by a decent margin.

 _“It's just the two of us out here,”_ Julia’s disembodied voice says. _“You could cripple me with a handful of well-placed shots and tow me into an ISSP patrol right now if you really wanted to.”_

“Why would I want to?” Faye answers cooly.

Julia hums. _“Just a thought.”_

Silence stretches between them, interrupted only by the occasional crackle of radio that tells Faye that Julia is still on the line. Wearily, Faye asks, “Are you really going for supplies or was this all a ploy to get me alone?”

 _“There’s a black market on Rhea not many people know about,”_ Julia says, accepting the change of topic with grace. _“If we want supplies with a minimum number of turned heads, it’s the best place to go.”_

Faye hears Julia adjusting in the cockpit of the Swordfish. _“I don’t like owing favors, Faye. If you won’t take a long-lost secret to your past as payment, the least I can do is take you out on the town. We can grab some makeovers and outfits while we’re in Rhea. My treat. When this ludicrous gang war bounty blows over, I’ll even bet on your next round of horses.”_

Puffing out a breath, Faye groans to herself. She doesn’t want to talk anymore about the past. If she never hears about the Red Dragon Syndicate again, it’ll be too soon.

“Alright,” Faye agrees cautiously. She follows Julia and the Swordfish into a barrel roll towards Rhea’s approaching atmosphere. “But only because you owe me a pony of my own."

 

* * *

7.

Spike wakes in the middle of the night to the sound of a bark. God help him, he’d know that bark anywhere.

His hand automatically goes for the gun under his pillow when he notices Julia isn’t in bed with him. A quick glance around the room proves she’s not in the bedroom at all. Another bark echoes in the hallway. Spike clambors to his feet and exits his room in his boxers and lopsided shirt, gun at the ready. He catches Jet emerging from his quarters, just as armed and disheveled. They share a look, an unspoken question of, ‘You heard it, too?’

From the direction of the living room, the barking continues. They nod to each other and Spike takes point, slinking silently towards the sound.

At the mouth of the hallway, there’s the silhouette of a woman. Lit up faintly by the light of the TV screen, she leans against the doorway with crossed arms and one foot propped up on the wall behind her for balance. She’s turned away from them, watching the television from her unobserved spot. In the dark, Spike can’t tell if it’s Julia or Faye.

He tucks away his gun and walks with a little more weight, and the sleek curtain of hair that whips around at his approach is most definitely Faye. Before he can get a word in, she pounces, slapping a hand over his mouth with a severe look. She jerks her head towards the living room. Spike follows her line of sight to Julia, sitting on the couch and watching what appears to be a handheld video of Ein playing on the screen. Spike nods in understanding and Faye lowers her hand. She catches Jet’s eye and mimes zipping his mouth shut.

The three of them hang back in the dark of the hallway as Ein’s barking is shushed by Edward’s gleeful voice, concluding her interview with the dog. The camera is collected from the floor and pointed at herself, her eyes bright and hair sticking up every which way.

 _“And now, ladies and gentlepeoples,”_ she announces, in her typical babbling nonsense, _“it is time to interview the rest of the native inhabitants!”_

The camera wobbles, balanced precariously atop Ed’s head, as she trots down the halls of the Bebop and into Jet’s bonsai room. Jet doesn’t look up from the plant he’s pruning even as Edward trills, _“Whatcha dooooooiiiiiing?”_

_“Concentrating, Ed. Something you are making very difficult.”_

The camera zooms into Jet’s hands, analyzing his work with a childish curiosity. _“Ed is interviewing the crew of the Bebop!”_

Jet snips a branch and grunts. _“That’s nice.”_

_“Does Jet-person have anything to say about his fellow comrades on the Bebop?”_

_“Yeah,”_ Jet wipes some sweat from his brow and mutters, _“They’re going to be the death of me.”_

On film, this cue is followed by Spike shouting angrily in the distance, then Faye’s voice asking for Jet. The camera on Ed’s head spins to find Faye leaning into the room, looking bored and half-asleep and holding a freshly brewed pot of coffee in her hands.

 _“We’re out of hot water,”_ Faye complains.

Jet can be heard groaning.

 _“Thought you should know,”_ Faye adds and leaves.

The camera bounces as Edward follows Faye out into the hallway. _“Edward would like some coffee!”_

_“You are getting nowhere near caffeine, you little weirdo.”_

_“Edward is conducting interviews! Would Faye-Faye like to say something about the other Bebopians?”_

_“No.”_

Both Faye and Edward come to an abrupt stop as a sopping-wet Spike steps out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist. Without a word, he grouchily snatches the pot of coffee from Faye and closes the door. Hard.

 _“You used all the hot water,”_ he says over Faye’s indignant yelling.

Faye bangs on the door. _“This is a new level of stubborn! Even for you, Spiegel!”_

The door reopens and an empty pot is shoved into Faye’s hands before shutting again. Faye sputters in frothing rage before shoving the pot at Ed and announcing that she’s off to go kill a man. As Faye stalks off down the hallway, Edward places the empty pot over Ein’s head like a space helmet and cheerily knocks on the door to the bathroom.

_“Spike-person! Would you—”_

_“Not on your life, Ed.”_

Edward makes a disappointed noise. It lasts only a moment before she’s trilling that she knows exactly who to ask for an interview. The camera cartwheels along with her as she takes the most prolonged route possible to the engine room of the Bebop, Ein barking at her heels the whole way.

Spike leans against the wall of the hallway, watching the film with a feeling he can’t place. He’d disliked having Ed around. It was annoying to teach her how to shoot a gun and frustrating to hunt space monsters with her, and watching her hog the living room to play chess for days on end got old really quick. He’d disliked Ein, too, but for entirely different reasons. How a dog could see so clearly into someone’s soul, he’d never know.

He was glad to be rid of them both — he’d told himself as much every night for as many nights as it took to finally believe it.

Curious, Spike glances over at Jet and Faye. Jet is openly wistfully as he watches Edward scramble around dangerous machinery to the tune of made-up lullabies, but there’s something like regret painted across Faye’s face. Spike angles his head to get a better look at her with his biological eye. Lit by the soft glow of the flickering screen, he swears it isn't completely ludicrous that Faye Valentine and the the little girl in the beta tape that bore her name are the same person. 

Spike’s sure he’s the only one who can tell Julia is aware of their presence, but she says nothing, watches the video like the rest of them as Edward begins asking the metal machinery questions about living with the four of them and pretending it is giving thoughtful answers.

At Spike’s shoulder, Jet sighs. “I miss that kid.”

Julia turns to them with a knowing smile. There’s an exaggerated gasp from the screen, and over the sound of Edward’s recorded voice, comes Edward’s voice.

“Jet-person! Spike-person! Faye-Faye!”

The home video swipes to the side to reveal a live-feed of Edward, in the cockpit of some ship, grinning at them from ear to ear.

Faye and Jet almost trip over each other in their rush to clamber onto the couch.

“You little shit,” Faye says.

“It’s good to see you again, kid!” Jet tacks on emphatically.

Spike plays it cool, drifting over to squeeze next to Julia on the couch. “I didn’t know we’d updated this screen for video calling.”

“We did not,” Edwards says in non-explanation. Ein pops into frame, having been seated on Ed’s lap. He barks at them excitedly as Ed waves at Julia. “Edward was telling the pretty lady all about her friends on the Bebop!”

“She caught me on the way to the bridge for a smoke,” Julia tells the three of them. “Scared the shit out of me.”

Spike’s arm goes around Julia’s waist automatically, her weight against his side a reassurance. “Edward, this is Julia.”

“Juuuuuuuuuuuulia! Spike’s Person!” Edward declares.

Faye snickers; Julia frowns. As Edward introduces herself with her ridiculously long name, Spike chuckles and quietly tells Julia not to sweat it, that Ed is just like that.

“To what do we owe the pleasure of a call?” Spike asks at last, stifling a yawn.

“Ein’s the one who called,” Edward says. Ein barks his agreement. “Edward and Ein saw Spike-person’s picture on the TV and worried Bebop was in trouble.” She pushes her goggles back from her face, looking serious. _“Is_ Spike-person in trouble?”

“It's nothing I can't handle, Ed.”

Edward pushes her goggles further back into her hair and blinks at him. “So Edward should stop planting false leads in the Big-Shot database?”

“Uh, no, no,” Spike corrects hastily. “You should definitely keep doing that.”

“Yay! Edward is a good fairy godmother!” She beams. “What’s everyone been up to on the beep-boop-Be-bop?”

Jet waves his hand dismissively. “Oh, you know. There's a carburetor in the engine that I can't fix just right without a second pair of hands.”

“And none of these bozos will paint my toenails for me,” Faye complains.

“Julia and I died. We’re better now,” Spike says conversationally. “It’s been the usual. How about you?”

“Edward is a-okay!” She gives them all a thumbs up with both thumbs and both big toes. How she’s steering is anyone’s guess. “Edward took Faye-Faye’s advice.”

Spike turns to stare at Faye incredulously. _“Faye-Faye’s_ advice?”

Under the scrutiny, Faye flushes pink. She leans forward, closer to the screen, to demand, “Ed, what are you talking about?”

“When Faye-Faye came back from Earth,” Edward clarifies brightly. “Some excellent advice was imparted upon Edward. About finding where you belong and who you belong with. How it's the best feeling in the whole wide world.”

Spike blinks at the screen. “Faye said that?” He points to Faye for clarification. _“This_ Faye?”

Faye slaps his finger out of her face. Astonishingly, she says nothing in her defense.

Jet smiles at the screen, bittersweet. “Well, I’m happy you figured it out, kiddo.”

“Edward is also happy,” Edward promises. Ein barks, interrupting. “Oh! This is Ed’s stop.” She waves at them with both hands. “Bye-bye, Bebop!”

The screen goes black before any of them can get a returning goodbye in.

Jet lets out a deep sigh and falls back onto the couch. Faye slouches in her seat while Spike idly plays with the ends of Julia’s hair. None of them move to get up or return to bed.

“She seems like a good kid,” Julia says neutrally.

Jet nods. “She was.”

Spike relents. “Yeah.”

Faye stares at her feet. “She was a nuisance.”

Over the top of Julia’s head, Spike watches Faye. She shifts in her seat and idly wrings her hands, not looking at any of them. Spike thinks back to the night he brought Julia back — how Faye had begged him to stay in her typical, selfish fashion. She said they were the only family she’d known; she said the Bebop was the only home she had left. Spike hadn’t thought she'd really meant it. He thinks he’s never believed in such fickle things as home and family.

The quiet lasts a few minutes longer until the alarm for the ship’s bay goes off.

Spike stands abruptly, gun back in hand. They all rush towards the hangar, arriving just as the doors have closed shut and a tiny, tinfoil-looking ship for 1.5 people pops it's lid off. Ein jumps out, yipping and racing around their feet, and Edward follows a moment later. She runs, squealing, straight into Jet’s waiting arms.

“You could’ve warned us!” Jet says, trying to be stern but laughing as he tosses her into the air effortlessly.

“Surprises are better!” Ed argues, wrapping her arms as far as she can around Jet’s middle.

Spike stays back with Faye and Julia, trying to decide if he’s annoyed or relieved, when Ed grabs him and Faye each by the front of their sleep shirts with her toes and hooks her spindly legs around their waists to pull the two of them into a four-limbed group hug on either side of Jet. Ein perches on Spike’s leg and barks up at them all.

“Yay!” Edward declares. “All together! All better!”

“Ed, I can't breathe!” Faye whines, trying to wriggle herself out of the grip of Ed’s legs. Spike grouses loudly about personal space. Jet tells them both to shut up.

Through it all, Julia stands to the side, watching them all with a barely-there smile, and Spike is struck with the terrifying realization that for the first time in his life, he might actually have everything he’s ever cared about right in front of him.

Edward and Ein are fed and Spike takes the opportunity to properly introduce Ed to Julia. They all talk for some time in the living room, updating Ed on the finer points of their travels since they parted ways. Edwards listens intently until, with little prompting, she takes up her old habit of sleeping anywhere on the Bebop that she can fit and promptly passes out on the floor of the living room half-way through the story of how she built her tic-tac spaceship. Jet throws a blanket over her and Ein curls up in the excess folds, just as tired from their journey. With the excitement passed, Faye yawns and announces she’s going straight back to bed and God bless the sorry soul that tries to wake her before she’s ready. Jet goes to check that Ed’s hacking of the ship’s bay doors didn’t cause any lasting side effects. Julia takes Spike by the hand and leads them back to their room.

“You told me you hated kids,” she says when they’re settled back in bed.

“Edward’s not a kid. She’s a force of nature,” Spike corrects.

“She likes you,” Julia says softly.

“She’s got terrible survival instincts.”

Julia rolls over and presses her lips in a chaste kiss to his shoulder. “She would’ve missed you.”

Spike lies awake the rest of the night, long after Julia has fallen asleep, feeling the need to run buzz under his skin. The White Tigers had him in their sights and why he didn’t run the moment the bulletin went out never really occurred to him — until Edward smiled at him in that way that made her whole face red like a tomato, and Spike Spiegel remembered men could be killed without ever having a hand laid on them.

Without waking Julia, Spike untangles himself from her and gets out of bed to dress. Grabbing a handful of weapons and ammunition, he heads to the hangar at a snail’s pace.

Jet would be able to travel better without worrying about Spike’s hefty bounty in his way, and he’d look out for Julia until Spike could send for her. Ed and Ein would understand. How much did kids and dogs understand anyway?

Faye would be glad he was gone. As long as it wasn’t somewhere she couldn’t follow, it would probably make her month to wake up and find him vanished from the Bebop. He wonders if she’ll take his non-goodbye as some kind of secret message to try to find him. Spike wonders if he doesn’t want exactly that.

Spike gets in the cockpit of the Swordfish, puts the key in the ignition, but doesn’t turn it. Instead, he sits in the silence, eventually lighting up a cigarette. Two. The buzzing doesn’t stop. It simmers under his skin, begging run run run. Spike smokes a whole pack of cigarettes and can’t bring himself to turn the ignition.

It would be better for everyone if he left, but Spike is selfish. He wants to stay. Whatever that implies, he doesn’t let himself look too closely.

Spike surrenders and hops out of the Swordfish, jacket and travel bag draped over one shoulder. He finds Ein waiting for him at the hangar door, eyeing him observantly.

“Out of gas,” Spike says.

Ein’s mouth drops open to a pant and he swears it looks like a smile.

Spike steps over Ein and heads back down the hallway to his room. The buzz has settled into a low thrum in his bones and he resigns himself to its distraction.

He hears distorted voices coming from behind Faye’s door and slows. It wouldn’t be the first time he's caught Faye rewatching her beta tape in the middle of the night when she thinks the rest of them are asleep. He’s caught it secondhand enough times he could probably recite it by heart just as well as Faye.

Through the door, Spike catches, _“You used all the hot water,”_ in his own recorded voice. Then, _“This is a new level of stubborn! Even for you_ —”

”Bastard,” Faye mutters, then rewinds the video and plays it again. In the hallway, Spike grins despite himself. 

Julia isn’t in their room when he returns. Her biological clock would be waking up around this time, so Spike gets in bed alone, burying his face in Julia’s pillow. He’s halfway asleep when he realizes that somewhere between Faye’s door and his bed, the buzzing stopped altogether.

 

* * *

8.

It takes Ed no time at all to familiarize herself to life back on the Bebop. It’s nearly so seamless, it’s like she never left. Faye would be lying if she said she didn’t miss having _someone_ listen to her unconditionally.

In the ensuing weeks, Jet updates Ed on the latest and greatest things falling apart on the ship and she, in turn, debugs every system they have. Spike ignores her so deliberately you’d swear he kept tabs of where she was at all times. And through it all, a jealous part of Faye is secretly grateful that Ed and Ein take to her better than they take to Julia.

Not that they _don’t_ take to Julia. Ein likes how she scratches behind his ears with her long nails and Edward likes that Julia tries to stump her with hard questions about hacking and programs. But when it comes to whose bunk both creatures feel like sharing, it’s always Faye who wakes up sporadically with a dog on her feet or a child nuzzling her back. She wonders if they still believe her when she yells at them to let her sleep in peace.

They get a lead on a promising Martian bounty — an androgynous individual wanted for cyber-scamming — and Ed makes an innocuous comment about how the Bebop crew got super duper better at bounty hunting with another girl on the team. When Jet argues that their luck simply got better, Julia proposes a battle of the sexes: Herself, Faye, and Edward versus Jet, Ein, and Spike, the latter who claimed he could nab the bounty in half the girls’ time. Faye and Julia decide to pose as wealthy lesbians with Ed as their daughter, and it’s almost worth more than the bounty itself to see Spike’s face when Faye gleefully brags about the plan.

In a fancy restaurant, a heavily disguised Faye and Julia enjoy all-you-can-eat lobster while Edward hides out in the air vents, hacking the system in search of their bounty. The boys are off working a different, certainly less luxurious, angle.

“Anything yet?” Faye asks into her comms.

“Not a peep! But Edward is ready and steady!”

“Keep us posted the moment they’re through the front door,” Julia says.

“Aye-aye, Spike’s Person!”

Julia sighs. Every time Ed called Julia “Spike’s Person,” Julia got an odd look in her eye that Faye always seemed to be around to catch.

“So, what do two filthy rich lovers do while they kill time before kidnapping a man?” Faye asks playfully.

They compare types and styles of guns; Faye tells stories of the less painful things she remembers about life on Earth; Julia tells Faye a little bit about Rhea, where she was born, and growing up in the shadow of Saturn. When they catch a group of men at a nearby table staring at them lasciviously, they play up their false romance to toy with them and talk about the hopelessness of men.

In the absence of Spike, the conversation turns to the future of Spike and Julia.

“All I ask is for a heads up if you plan on having any rugrats,” Faye says, staring intently at the swirling remainder of wine in her glass. “If for no other reason because I would pay good money to watch Spike attempt parenthood.”

Julia gets real quiet.

Faye dips the last of her lobster in its sauce and quickly says, “Of course, if that’s not your thing, there's no fault in that. The two of you can just be disgustingly romantic until you die — as long as it isn't around me while I’m trying to eat.”

Julia still doesn't reply. Finally, Faye looks up. Julia won’t look at her, instead staring intently at her empty plate of food.

It takes a moment for Faye to read between the lines, and then a moment longer to convince herself she’s seeing what she’s seeing.

Faye’s fork falls onto her plate with a clatter that makes at least four heads turn. “You're leaving?”

Julia doesn't answer. Doesn't lift her head. Doesn't move.

Something seizes inside Faye. A biting anger she knows too well. “You're _leaving_ him?”

“I'm just leaving,” Julia corrects quietly.

The blood pounds in Faye’s ears until she can barely hear Edward muttering to herself on comms. “You can't.”

“Because he'll go do something stupid like kill himself?” Julia’s eyes flick up to meet Faye’s. Her heart lurches at the challenge laid plain. “Say it.”

Faye swallows hard, desperately trying to douse the fury. They were on a mission. A bounty was at stake.

“You weren't here,” Faye says with as much control as she can. “You haven't seen him without you.”

“And you haven't seen me without him.”

Julia is as placid as a lake, and Faye feels like a bomb has been dropped on her. If there was no Bebop without Spike, there was no Spike without Julia. “You can't abandon him like this. Not again.”

Calm as ever, Julia asks, “Why?”

“You know why!” Faye bites back, furious.

“Tell me why, Faye.”

Faye stabs the porcelain plate with her  fork and feels the squeal in her bones. She grits her teeth and makes the words come out. “He loves you.”

Julia sits back, watching Faye. “Have you ever held a man’s life in you hands?”

Faye bends the sterling silver fork in anger. “This isn’t about me! This is about you and Spike.”

Julia looks Faye up and down like a butcher analyzes a carcass. “Did he ever tell you what I did? Within the Syndicate?”

Faye gestures around them, torn between making a scene and keeping their cover. “What does it matter?!”

“It’s how we met,” Julia says.

“So?” Faye bites out.

“I was an interviewer,” Julia explains, “because the Red Dragons felt ‘interrogator’ wasn't a fitting title for a woman, though the job was the same. I studied people so I could break them down to their basic parts and acquire information.” She turns her wine glass around so that the lipstick stain is directly facing Faye. “When I first met Spike, it was personally. Vicious took me out to a pool hall to meet his best friend. We played a few rounds, ordered a few rounds, and then I said I'd go home with whoever won the next match between them.” The wine glass makes another rotation. “Spike threw the game so I would go home with Vicious. And that was everything I needed to know about Spike Spiegel.”

Faye reaches for her own wine and downs the rest of it in one gulp. Into the empty glass, she mumbles, “You telling me this, you really _are_ leaving.” When Julia doesn't answer, Faye speaks again, curiosity getting the better of her. “What do you mean ‘personally’?”

“Mao was like a father to them,” Julia explains. “He wanted a son who could do what he couldn't with the Red Dragon Syndicate — go above and beyond. Vicious had no finesse, no ingenuity. But Spike had no ambition. He had no fear.” She rapped a nail against her wine glass. “I was told to remedy that. Professionally. Take as long as I needed.”

Julia sips from her wine and refuses to look at Faye. “It took me weeks to break him, to find Spike Spiegel buried at the core of some scared animal that had never really learned to be human. I knew then he wasn't what Mao wanted; just like I knew Mao would kill him the moment he realized it. I knew Spike had to get out. He _wanted_ to get out. I didn't ever think he’d ask me to go with him. That's where it unraveled.”

Faye moans and rubs her temples. “I can't believe this.”

“I love him,” Julia says matter-of-fact, “but I'm not good for him, Faye.”

“How can you say that?” Faye demands. “He's happy. He’s himself again.”

“Because he's with me and only because he’s with me? Because I'm responsible for his happiness?” The bitterness seeps into Julia’s voice. “What about what I want? A ball and chain is still just that, even if—”

“No, shut up!” Faye snaps, banging a hand on the table. “You’re just like him. Selfish and stupid! If he even looked at me _once_ the way he looks at you—!”

Faye catches herself. The silence hangs in the air between them. Julia reaches across the table to refill Faye’s wine and then hers, saying nothing.

Faye backtracks, stammers, “That's not— I don't—”

“You're in love with him.”

Faye stares at her empty plate, feebly trying to hide her reddening face in her hair. “I'm not.”

“It’s why you saved his life,” Julia says, as if she's not explaining Faye’s own emotions to her.

“It isn't,” Faye insists childishly. “ _You_ saved his life. And this isn’t about me,” Faye says again. “Stop avoiding the subject!”

Julia finishes her newly poured glass of wine in three gulps. Her hand shakes and Faye notices. “In saving him, you saved me, Faye. But if I stay with him, I’ll always have that one eye on the past. As will he. If I’ve learned anything in all this, it's that I don't want to live like that anymore. Like you said, all that brings is tragedy.” Julia stands to leave. “It was a pleasure working with you, Faye Valentine.”

Faye stands up after her and, as casual as anything, pulls her gun on Julia. Patrons around them up and run. Julia stills, looking curious in Faye’s crosshairs.

“Come back to the ship,” Faye growls, pulling back the hammer. “You want to wander back out into the endless black like the loneliness is gonna have answers for you? Fine. But if you want to be so noble, do it like you have a spine. I, for one, am sick and tired of being thrown away like yesterday’s trash and—”

Faye is shot through the chest. She collapses onto the table, dimly aware that some idiot is yelling, accusing her of trying to take their bounty. Julia shouts her name as Faye slides off the table and to the floor. She knows she should be stemming the wound. She should be trying to run. But her stupid brain goes into shock that she's actually been shot. Faye Valentine didn’t _get_ shot. Spike and Jet and Julia got shot, not _her._

Through a haze, she hears the sounds of Julia fighting off numerous rival bounty hunters and the androgynous person’s thugs, watches their bodies hit the floor in staccato at the hand of Julia’s gun or the lobster knife she wields with deadly precision. Faye watches, forcing herself to breathe through the blinding pain, as Julia dispatches most of them before dropping to her knees and hauling Faye up and over both her shoulders. She presses her hand into the wound at Faye’s chest and the pain brings back the world long enough to hear Julia shouting at Ed for evacuation and yelling at Faye to stay the fuck awake. Julia runs from the restaurant, occasionally firing behind her, until she reaches the roof of the building where the lights of a zipcraft descend overhead.

As she fades, Faye doesn't see her family or her past like they said she would when her life flashed before her eyes. No moment of any particular significance comes to mind.

Instead, her mind provides for her the memory of Spike’s mismatched eyes as he teased her about cheating Jet out of his clothes.

 

* * *

9.

Jet sits by Faye on the couch, the woman all patched up but still unconscious. He takes her pulse and sighs bitterly. He’d nearly done it. He’d nearly made it a full nine months without having to dig a bullet out of the chest of someone he knew. Just when he and Edward had finally bleached the couch, too.

Spike walks in, hands deep in his pocket. He leans up against the back of the couch and looks down at Faye.

“She's going to be pissed when she wakes up,” he quips. “A bullet scar is absolutely going to ruin her bikini body.”

Jet snorts. “I’m betting she's going to be livid we even had to come in and get her at all.”

“We were told not to come and we shouldn't have.”

Jet raises a brow at Spike’s callousness, but is surprised when Spike takes a seat on the arm of the couch closest to Faye’s feet and lights up.

“So we should’ve left them?” Jet asks tentatively.

Spike shrugs. “We would’ve won the bet, for sure. I think getting shot automatically disqualifies you.”

“Uh huh,” Jet says knowingly. “That why the Swordfish was first on the scene when shit went sideways for them?”

Spike’s only answer is a long stream of smoke.

From the top of the stairs, Julia clears her throat. Jet has to suppress a flinch; Spike doesn’t so much as stutter on his next drag.

“Jet. Can we talk?”

Spike waves Jet off. “Go. Not like I got anything better to do.”

Jet stands, taking note that Julia doesn't look at Spike nor the other way around. It’s been like that since Faye came back bloody and Jet’s been waiting ever since for the other shoe to drop. This seemed like as good a time as any.

Julia takes Jet into the corridor, only partially out of hearing range of the living room, and hands him a portion of money from their penultimate job.

“This should cover my rent to the end of the year, plus a little extra. Get some kind of ridiculous logo painted on the side of the ship.”

Jet stares at the money in her hand, and takes it with a sigh. “Does Spike know?”

“Spike and I are long past the point of lying to each other.”

Counting the bills mechanically, Jet says, “I’ll admit, I’m disappointed in myself for thinking we were past using the Bebop as a pit stop for stray cats.”

Julia smiles warmly at him. “You are. It's home to birds of a feather. The stray cat is onto other things.”

“You know, we all came around to the idea of belonging,” Jet reminds her. “We decided it's the best thing there is,” he says, quoting Ed.

“I know,” Julia agrees. “And some of us belong amongst the stars.”

Jet holds out a hand for a shake. “Well, if that ever changes, we've always got space for another cook.”

Julia shakes his hand, her smile unwavering. “Take care of them, Jet. Someone needs to be in touch with their feelings on this damn ship.”

Without making a single sound, Julia leaves. From the rafters somewhere behind Jet, Ed drops down into a crouch.

“Spike’s Person is leaving?” she asks curiously.

“Julia’s off to have adventures without us.” Jet musses up her hair. “Guess that means you get a bigger portion of tonight’s dinner, yeah?”

“Yay!”

Ed scampers off and Jet returns to the living room. Spike has sat himself in Jet’s former seat and is shuffling a deck of cards with lightning fast proficiency.

“She go?” Spike asks, sounding casual.

“Yeah.”

“Good riddance.”

“Good riddance,” Jet agrees softly. “One woman with attitude is enough, I think.”

Spike nods and Jet turns down the hallway, stopping short of his room when he hears a pained groan from the couch. He heads back to the living room, arriving just as Faye’s eyes flutter open weakly.

She glances around for a moment before her eyes finally settle on the occupant of the chair at her side. “Spike? You're...here?”

“I live here.”

Her eyes go to the cards he’s shuffling then back to his face. “What...are you doing?”

“ _Someone_ has to repay you for all the terrible singing you've subjected me to while incapacitated, and Ein was busy.”

Faye frowns. “No, what are you doing with the cards? What are you, an amateur?”

Spike unloads the deck into her face and leisurely ambles out of the room as Faye shouts after him that she's going to pull the bullet out of her chest and shove it down his throat.

Jet smiles to no one and turns back to his room as an alarm goes off, indicating that the ship bay doors have been opened.

 

* * *

10.

For all his confidence and bravado, Spike becomes a practical ghost in the weeks after Julia’s departure. Shut up in his room, he spends so long listening to sad jazz on loop that the rest of them lose count of the days. They give him his space, though Faye catches Jet more than once occasionally pressing his ear to Spike’s door until he gets satisfactory proof of life. Faye dissuades Ed’s numerous well-meaning attempts to get Spike out of his room for an adventure or two. Sometimes, she explains to Ed, you just have to draw a square in the dirt and lie in it for a very long time before coming to your senses.

Spike’s first day back on his feet finds them docked in Ganymede. Between Jet’s connections and Ed’s hacking, Spike Spiegel was a dead man once more and they could make better, more popular ports with little issue. Faye is infinitely grateful not to be taking the universe’s longest detours in an attempt to avoid all civilization. It’s nice to visit a proper city now and again.

Upon finding Spike’s bedroom empty for the first time in innumerable days, Faye makes her way to the deck of the Bebop to find Spike smoking and watching the city. He's shirtless and his sleep pants hang loose off his hips with all the not-eating he’s been doing.

“Where is everyone?” he asks without turning around.

“Jet is currently off plying the ISSP for some sort of lead on his current bounty. Ed and Ein giddily tagged along.”

Faye leans against the railing on his left, seeing what the hell about Ganymede he found so interesting.

“How’s your brand new bullet wound?” he asks, holding out his box of cigarettes for her to take one.

She scoffs and unconsciously scratches at the starburst of pink just under her right collarbone. “I don’t want false sympathy, Spiegel.”

“I do.”

Faye raises a brow at him.

“The love of my life felt I was too needy and packed her bags,” Spike says conversationally. “I'll take any sympathy you can spare, real or otherwise.”

This throws Faye off. After a beat, she grumbles and holds out her hand for the cigarettes. Spike taps one out for her. She lights up against the glowing tip of Spike’s own cigarette without meeting his eyes and searches for the words to say she’s sorry about everything.

“Do you like fairy tales?” Spike asks when they’ve both settled back into staring at nothing.

Faye takes a deep drag. “I _hate_ them.”

Ignoring her, Spike explains, “It's something Julia taught me to do: displace the experience into something secondhand. Whatever you feel and whatever happened, it happened to someone else. To everyone ever.”

Spike puts out his current cigarette and, not waiting if see if Faye is listening, says, “There once was a cat who lived and died and lived again, and all the while loved a white cat. The cats were separated in a terrible flood, stuck on opposite sides of the river. The tabby cat spent so long looking for a way across, he barely noticed the lush forest around him. When he finally crossed to be with the white cat, he learned she had spent her time hunting and fighting and growing stronger. So when the white cat had a chance at 8 more of her lives, she left the tabby cat all scratched up. Licking his wounds, the tabby cat turned at last to see the forest, and it was quite the paradise to behold.”

Faye rolls her eyes. “I’ve heard this one before, Spike. Both of you tell it terribly.”

When he says nothing, Faye finds him watching her with that intent gaze, like when he’d found her in the hallway. It takes her a beat to realize what it is.

Spike is looking at her with both his eyes.

Faye looks away first. She rolls her cigarette between her fingers. “How are you holding up?”

“I’m alive.”

She stares at the water below them. “She tell you why?”

Spike sighs. “Same as she told you.”

“In the hangar?”

“In the restaurant. I bugged you.”

“I know that's not — _you what?!”_

Spike pulls out a bugged poker chip from his pocket and expertly dances it across the backs of his fingers like a coin. “I didn't want to miss out on fake lesbian funtimes.”

Faye opens and closes her mouth, recalling the details of that conversation before she was shot. She takes a heavy drag of her cigarette.

“Well, fuck me,” she mutters.

Spike shrugs, still leisurely looking out over the water. “I mean, if you want.”

Faye chokes on her cigarette. “Ew! Are you out of your mind?! You're barely dry from the break-up sex! I have my fucking dignity.”

Faye turns from him, smoking angrily in the quiet.

Then Spike says, “It _was_ really good break-up sex.”

He can't keep the infuriating smirk off his face. Faye yanks him by the back of his pants up and over the railing and into the sea before storming off into the ship.

They make it another week or so before Faye can't stand Spike’s shitty card technique a minute longer as he practices in the living room nearly every day. She snatches the deck from him as he tries out card tricks during one particular quiet stretch into the infiniteness of space like a million other quiet stretches. She insists on teaching him how to shuffle them properly. For Christ’s sake, she worked in a casino.

It turns into a two-man game of poker. Which, with their current shortage of money, quickly becomes strip poker. Which, when Faye throws the game, then turns into the hottest, angriest couch sex either of them will ever have. Spike wears his tie the entire time.

Later, when they've moved to his bedroom, Faye cards her fingers through his hair as he dozes on her chest. The smell of something in the cigarette smoke and sweat that cling to him remind her of Singapore, of home. Her fingers dance down his back, tracing scars as if they were star charts. Sleeping Beauty stirs at her touch.

“Tell me a fairytale,” he requests sleepily. “Or sing me a lullaby. Your pick.”

Faye snorts. “What? I’m terrible at stories and you hate my singing.”

Spike shrugs lazily. “Do it to spite me then.”

“How about you sing _me_ something, cowboy, huh? Show me how it's done.”

He mumble-hums something jazzy and appallingly off-key. Faye laughs until her sides hurt and Spike smiles into her chest. She hopes he can hear the way her heart races.


End file.
